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CAUSES FOE 




NATIONAL HUMILIATION: 



A DISCOURSE, 



DiaaVEUKD ON THK HAY OF FASTIXtJ, HUMILIATION AND PHAYKK 
RECOJIMKXPEl; DY THK PHKSIDK-NT OF THE UNITKU STATKS. 



SEPXEOVEBEIl S6, 1861. 



By R. L. STANTOJS^ D. D., 

fAS-Toll OF TIIK riUtiT I'ltESBYTKUIAN CUXJECH, ClIU.r.ICllTIIK, llllll 



•' Lil'oity and Uiiii.u. imw and forover, one and iiisci)aral>U'." — "Secession is Civil Wiir." 

Ddiiiil Wuhftcr. 
" Tlu' jiowcr, tilt' uutlioritv and dignity of tiro Government ought to be niiiiiitaiiied. and it-Mist- 
ance (Uit down at evoiy hazard. " llairy Cloy. 



'• The Federal Vnion inust and slmll be preserved." 



AntlrvU! JticksoH. 



" Say ye not, A Confederacy, f o all tlem to v horn this [H'opU- shall say, A ( 'oiifedcrat y ; neither 
fear ye tlieiv fear, nor ic afraid." The Prophet iutuih. 



CINCrNNATI: 

MOORE, WILSTACH, KEYS & CO., Printers, 

25 WKST KdURTH STREET. 



18 6 1 



CAUSES FOR 



NATIONAL HUMILIATION 



A DISCOURSE, 



DELIVEKED ON THE DAY OF FASTING, IIUMIIilATION AND PRAYER, 
RECOMMENDED BY THE PHESJDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, 



SEFTEnVEBEI^ S6, 1861. 



By R. L. STANTON, D. D., 

w 

PASTOR OF THE FIRST PRESnYTERTAN CHURCH, CHII.LICOTHE, OHIO. 



" Liberty and Uniou, now and forever, one and inseparable. " — " Secession is Civil War." 

Daniel Webster. 

" The power, the authority and dignity of tlu- Government ought to be maintained, and resist- 
ance put down at every hazard." Henry Clny. 

" The Federal Union must and shall be preserved." Andrew JacVaon. 

" Say ye not, A Confederacy, to all tkem to whom this people shall say, A Confederacy ; neither 
fear ye their fear, nor be afraid." The Prophet Isaiah. 



CINCINNATI: 

MOORE, WILSTACH, KEYS & CO., Printers, 

25 WEST FOURTU STREET. 

1861 . 



CORRESI^ONIDENCE. 



Chllicothe, Oct. 8, 1861. 
Rkv. R. L. STANTON, D. D., 

Dear Sir: — Believing that the sentiments of your discourse 
on the state of the Nation, delivered on the 2Gth ult., are eminently just, 
patriotic, and suited to the times, and that the interests of our suffering 
country would be promoted by their wider circulation, Ave respectfully urge 
you to give them publicity in a permanent form, and for that purpose we ask 
a copy for publication. 

Yours respectfully, 
0. T. REEVES, THEODORE SHERER, 

WILLIAM WADDLE, JOS. SILL, 

ORLAND SMITH, DANIEL DUSTMAN, 

ALEX'R RENICK, SAM'L F. McCOY, 

WM. FULLERTON, HUMPHREY FULLERTON, 

J. MADEIRA, ANDREW CARLISLE, 

E. H. ALLEN, HENRY S. LEWIS, 

BENJ. F. STONE, NATHANIEL WILSON, 

WM. B. FRANKLIN, THOMAS MILLER, 

T. S. GOODMAN, Jr., F. CAMPBELL, 

DIXON FULLERTON, JAS. INIcLANDBURGH. 



Chillicothe, Oct. 9, 1861. 

Hon. 0. T. REEVES, Dr. WADDLE, Col. SMITH, and others: 

Gentlemen: — Your note of tlie 8th inst., asking a copy of my Fast- 
Day Discourse for publication, is before me. I received a note of similar 
purport from many of you, dated on the day of the delivery of the discoux'se. 
To that I gave a negative answer, as I could not, just then, command the time 
to make a copy for the press within the period required for the immediate 
purpose in hand. 

To your present note, I respond affirmatively and cheerfully; and the 
more so, that persons who had not the opportunity to hear the discourse 
delivered, some of whom have given their opinions upon it, maj- read it for 
themselves and judge accordingly. , 

For its " sentiments," which I am gratified meet your approbation, I made 
no apology in the pulpit, and I make none now. I have been too long in the 
ministry, and know too well what belongs to the duties of the office, to be iu 



4 CORRESPONDENCE. 

any manner of tloubt respecting the propriety of such an utterance on such 
an occasion, or to be in the least disturbed by any comments which have been 
made. It lias always been deemed the just province of the pulpit, on days set 
apart by the civil authorities for public Humiliation or Thanksgiving, to speak 
out freely and fully upon national affairs, in their moral and religious bearings; 
to speak of public measures and public men, when the facts furnish the 
warrant; to discuss any policy of the government, vitally affecting the social, 
moral and spiritual well-being of the people; and thus to direct the reflections 
as well as the devotions of those committed to our charge. This is the principle 
by which I was guided in my discourse of the 2Gth ult. It will be found that 
it has no political bearing other than this. In the admirable paper of Dr. 
Hodge, upon "The State of the Country," in the Princeton Review of January 
last, he pertinently remarks: "There are occasions when political questions 
rise into the sphere of morals and religion; when tlie rule for political action 
is to be sought, not in considerations of state policj', but in the law of God.'' 

At no time in our history as a nation has the pulpit of all denominations 
been more united and distinguished for patriotic devotion, than during the 
seven years' war of the Old Revolution, though then, as now, there w^ere a few 
exceptions. We are again in the midst of a revolution. As I have spoken of 
its character in this discourse, I need say nothing of it here. I can not. 
however, refrain from remarking, that it is the time for earnest words and 
prompt action, if we are to save for our children the heritage which has come 
down to us tlirough a baptism of blood and a sacrifice of treasure from our 
fathers. Nor can I envy either the head or the heart of that man who calls 
himself an American, whether native or naturalized, but have for such only 
deep commiseration, who does not see, in the simple issue now before the 
country, that it is his duty to sustain the Federal Government in putting down 
this unwarranted rebellion, by all the power of his manhood — by his purse, 
his prayers, and his sword. 

Most respectfully, 

Your fellow-citizen, 

R. L. STANTON. 



la tijc Ircsiicnt of % ^luitri f tutts. 



A PROCLAMATION. 



ir/jfrtfrts, A joint committee of both Houses of Congress has waited on the 
President of the United States, and requested him to recommend a day of 
public humiliation, prayer and fasting, to be observed by the people of the 
United States with religious solemnities, and the oifering of fervent supplica- 
tions to Almighty God for the safety and welfare of these States, his blessings 
on their arms, and a speedy restoration to peace; and whereas, it is fit and 
becoming in all people, at all times, to acknowledge and revei-e the supreme 
government of God, to bow in humble submission to His chastisements, to 
confess and deplore their sins and transgressions, in the full conviction that 
the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and to pray with all fervency 
and contrition for the pardon of their past offences, and for a blessing upon 
their preseut and prospective actions; and whereas, when our beloved country, 
once, by the blessing of God, united, prosperous and happy, is now afflicted 
with factious and civil war, it is peculiarly fit for us to recognize the hand of 
God in this visitation, and, in sorrowful remembrance of our own faults and 
crimes, as a nation and as individuals, to humble ourselves before Him, and to 
pray for his mercy; to pray that we may be spared further punishment, though 
most justly deserved; that our arms may be blessed, and made effectual for the 
re-establishment of law, order and peace throughout our country, and that the 
inestimable boon of civil and religious liberty, earned, under His guidance 
and blessing, by the labors and sufi'crings of our fathers, may be restored in 
all its original excellency; Therefore I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the 
United States, do appoint the last Thursday in September next as a day of 
humiliation, prayer and fasting, for all the people of the nation, and I do 
earnestly recommend to the people, and especially to all ministers and teachers 
of religion, of all denominations, to all heads of families, to observe and keep 
that day, according to their several creeds and modes of worship, in all 
humility, and with all religious solemnity, to the end that the united prayer of 
the nation may ascend to the Throne of Grace, and bring down plentiful 
blessings upon our own country. 

In testimony whereof, &c. 

ABEAHAM LINCOLN. 
By the President, 

William H. ^T£.\f\vi.D, Secretary of Stale. 



FAST-DAY DISCOURSE. 



Psalms, 4: 5. 
"Oifer the sacrifices of thanksgiving; and put your trust in the Lord.' 

The pro'clamation of the President of the ITnited States, 
just read, indicates the object for which this day has been 
set apart from secular pursuits to religious solemnities. We 
are convened in. the house of God in obedience to the Pres- 
ident's recommendation, and I trust we ma}- engage in the 
services of the present hour in the true spirit of his most ad- 
mirable proclamation. 

Such a day as this has never before dawned upon our 
country. There arc, probably, at this moment, throughout 
this nation, one million of men under arms, and half that 
number within forty miles of its capital. We take into this 
estimate the armies in the field, l!^orth and South, with the 
regiments in camp and in process of organization, and the 
Home Guards in the cities and towns; and includino- all 
these, a million may fall far short of the full number. Is 
not this a most astounding fact? Has it, to-day, any par- 
allel ? Have any of the empires of the Old World such a 
military array within them ? 

And how speedily has all this been accomplished ! Six 
months ago, thirty thousand men made up the whole num- 
ber, probably, of armed soldiers in our country, while the 
actual army of the United States was but a trifle over half that 
number. The people were engaged in their ordinary pur- 
suits, every kind of business was unusually brisk, the fruits 
of the earth and the products of the commerce of the seas 
were never more abundant, the hum of industry was heard 
on every hand, and a high degree of general prosperity, 



8 FAST-DAY DISCOURSE. 

witli all the blessings of peace, was eDJoyed by all classes of 
our countrymen. 

But now, within a half-year, how changed ! The earth is 
yielding her annual reward to the husbandman, and under 
the blessing of a bountiful Providence all the necessaries 
and comforts of life are bestowed in rich profusion still. 
But yet, every branch of business and trade is more or less 
paralyzed, scores of thousands are thrown out of employ- 
ment, the largest capitalists in many of our commercial 
marts have become bankrupt, hundreds of merchant ships 
float lazily in the docks, workshops are closed, railroads are 
broken up, and the buzz of the spindle and the ring of the 
anvil are silent in the places of daily toil ; while now, the 
most familiar sounds heard in the valleys and over the hills 
and prairies and amid all the cities and villages of our land, 
from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and from the Northern 
Lakes to the Southern Gulf, are the roll of the drum, the 
blast of the bugle, and the measured tramp of armed men 
sroiniT forth to the terrible havoc of war. Yes! — it is a 
reality, that war, grim, bloody, relentless war, has become 
the business of the country, supplanting the pursuits of 
peace, and engaging larger armies than were ever led by 
Napoleon and Wellington, or Alexander and Xerxes, or 
Csesar and Hannibal, combined. 

And wherefore this world-astounding transition — a change 
that eclipses in its suddenness and magnitude all the extrav- 
agance of romance and fable? Have the despots of the Old 
World entered into a solemn league and covenant to destroy 
the Model Republic ? Have they, under their Holy Alliance, 
sent their fleets and armies to blot out our very name, that 
our national example shall no longer cause their thrones to 
tremble? And is it to resist a foreign invasion of combined 
Europe, that we have so readily laid aside the arts of peace, 
and have, in a single summer, become like the people of an- 
cient Sparta, a nation of soldiers? Ah ! would that it were 
so. Would that this were all that we are marshaled in 
battle array for — to meet the world in arms ! We would 
rejoice to accept even that terrible issue for the alternative 
that is forced upon us. But we have not the privilege of 
the exchange. Civil war is the issue tliat is made ; and it 



FAST-DAY DISCOURSE. 9 

is this fearful visitation, as a judgment of God, which has 
called us to the house of prayer. 

And while such a day as this has never before arisen upon 
our country — a day for public national humiliation, prayer, 
and fasting, occasioned by such intestine strife — no such 
spectacle as this land now presents has ever been witnessed 
since the world was made. This is no extravagance. His- 
tory tells of nothing like it. If we choose to examine the 
entire past history or present condition of the world, com- 
paring other nations with our own, a few months ago — with 
her more than thirty millions of people and her wide domain 
of empire, covering twenty degrees of latitude and fifty-five 
of longitude, the richest and most varied in soil and climate 
and productions ever watered by the rains of heaven ; with 
her free and elective form of popular government, by uni- 
versal suffrage; with commerce and manufactures which vie 
with the most forward nations of Europe ; with inventive 
genius and mechanical skill which have made America the 
home of some of the grandest discoveries of the age ; with 
a system of popular education superior to that of any other, 
which brings its blessings to the rich and poor alike ; with 
religious institutions unparalleled for their influence and 
prevalence, benign and universal, and yet supported by the 
unconstrained good will of the people ; in a word, with all 
the known appliances of a high civilization, which places 
ours in the front rank among the nations of the earth, in 
this age of rapid and amazing progress — and then, if we 
compare all this with what is presented to the world's eye 
to-day, as our condition, the whole nation armed in a bloody 
civil war, by which all this good to ourselves and its example 
to the world are fearfully imperiled, is it not stating the 
case in the simplest words of truth when we say that in no 
age of the world has such a spectacle ever before been wit- 
nessed ? 

But the question still presses, and from these very consid- 
erations still more urgently, What are the causes which have 
plunged such a people into an embittered war with one an- 
. other, so that it should seem suitable for us to convene in 
the sanctuary, and as a nation come before the God of liga- 
tions iu the ordinances of worship ? 



10 FAST-DAY DISCOURSE. 

This question, justly considered, will bring our minds to 
the proper subjects of contemplation to-day, and may aid 
our hearts to proper feelings in view of them. The answer 
to this question presents itself in a two-fold light — causes 
arising from conflicting views and interests among the peo- 
ple themselves, as divided into the two great sections now at 
strife; and causes arising from the sins of the whole nation, 
which have justly provoked and brought down the judg- 
ments of God upon us, as war in all its forms, whatever may 
be its secondary causes, is always regarded in Scripture as a 
visitation of God upon nations for their oftences against the 
principles he has laid down for their conduct. 

It is highly proper for us to examine the causes involved 
in both branches of the subject. If we can view" them justly, 
weighing their real merits, and can be suitably affected in 
heart by the view, and can be led to a right conduct thereby, 
we may, in our worship, enter into the true spirit of the 
first part of our text : " Offer the sacrifices of righteousness." 
And then, if we take a just view of the perils that are be. 
fore this nation, and of the true source of its deliverance, as a 
christian people — however strong maj' be our reliance upon 
armies and munitions of war, and however earnestly we^ 
should as jiatriots support them, and as christians pray for 
their success — we shall be led to look beyond these mere 
means of safety, and obey the injunction of the second part 
of the text: "Put your trust in the Lord." 

This text, as a whole, presents to my own mind, in its ob- 
vious suggestions, just those topics for thought and feeling 
which the appointed worship on this day of humiliation 
should beget. In endeavoring to lead your minds and hearts 
in these services, it is no aftectation in mc to say, that I feel 
utterly incompetent to do justice to the occasion, or the 
subjects on which I propose to dwell. 

" Offer the sacrifices of righteousness ; and put your trust 
in the Lord." The text is plain, and calls for little or no 
exposition. To "offer a sacrifice" to God, is as well under- 
stood under the Christian as it was under the Mosaic econ- 
omy, and it is a duty which belongs to both. Then, it was 
the putting to death of an animal, and presenting it upon 
the altar; or the devotingof some other gift in the same way. 



FAST-DAY DISCOURSE. 11 

Xow, it is a spiritual devotion to God, of the aftections of 
the heart and the services of the life. To offer a " sacrifice 
of righteousness," was then, not the immolation of right- 
eousness itself, but the presenting of a victim without blem- 
ish, typical of the Immaculate Lamb of God, with a penitent 
heart in the worshipper and a faith in the perfect righteous- 
ness of the promised Messiah. It is the same now, spirit- 
ually, and is the offering to God of holy affections and holy 
services, with penitence for sin, and faith in the obedience 
and sacrifice of Christ. To " put your trust in the Lord," is 
a phrase of the text meaning then, now, and at all times, 
substantially and spiritually the same thing. 

Now, what application shall we make of this plain text to 
this day, and to the objects for which it is set apart? 

God rules the world in righteousness, and he requires 
righteousness in mankind. " Clouds and darkness are round 
about him ; righteousness and judgment are the habitation 
of his throne." He says to man : " Be ye holy, for I am 
holy." And he is only pleased with and favorable to men 
when they exhibit a character for righteousness : " Then 
shalt thou be pleased with the sacrifices of righteousness." 

The same character which he requires in men individ- 
ually, he demands of nations organically; of the people and 
their rulers ; in the form and administration of government 
over and among themselves, respecting all classes and indi- 
viduals, as citizens embraced in or others under the control 
of the State ; and in all the intercourse of nations one with 
another. What is sin or righteousness in the individual, 
under the law of God, is such in the nation at large and 
organically, so far as these characteristics may apply to men 
and nations respectively. Hence we hear God saying : " It 
is an abomination to kings to commit wickedness ; for the 
throne is established by righteousness.'' " llighteousness 
exalteth a nation ; but sin is a reproach to any people." 

And not only does God demand righteousness in men, but 
he punishes them when they do not exhibit it. This is 
written on every page of his word. He deals upon this prin- 
ciple with nations : " Thus saith the Lord unto this people, 
Thus have they loved to wander, they have not refrained 
their feet, therefore the Lord doth not accept them; he will 



12 FAST-DAY DISCOURSE. 

now remember their iniquity, and visit their sins." And in 
order to deliver both men and nations from their sins, to in- 
duce linmiliation and repentance, and to lead them to do the 
works of righteousness, he brings upon them his sore judg- 
ments : "When th}^ judgments are in the earth, the inhab- 
itants of the world will learn righteousness." For this end, 
the minister of God is directed: "Cry aloud, spare not, lift 
up thy voice like a trumpet, and show my people their trans- 
gressions, and the house of Jacob their sins. Yet, they 
seek me daily, and delight to know my ways, as a nation 
that did righteousness." 

Such, then, being God's character and administration — 
distinguished for righteousness, demanding it in nations as 
in men, visiting them with judgment for sin that he may 
punish and destroy them or bring them to righteousness 
through repentance, and as he at this moment is desolating 
our land with judgments to bring us as w^e would hope to 
see our sins and to repent of them and turn to righteousness, 
and not to destroy us — the duty before us to-day is a plain 
one. It is to inquire what have been our sins as a people 
which have provoked God's displeasure, to confess them, to 
humble ourselves and repent; and then to show forth, in 
place of the things w'hercin we have otfendcd, a righteous 
conduct before heaven and the world. We shall in this 
manner, and we can in no other, " offer the sacrij&ces of 
righteousness." 

Pursuing the plan already indicated, w^e may inquire, in 
reference to one branch of the causes of the judgments of 
God upon us as a nation, — 

I. What are some of our National Sins, as jcommitted 
AGAINST the Government of God over us? 

I shall pass over this point with brevity, doing little more 
than naming some of our more prominent sins, in their spe- 
cial aspect toward God, for a two-fold reason, (1.) That only 
a few weeks ago, suggested by the day of humiliation and 
prayer set apart by the General Assembly of our church, I 
preached on this subject, specifying and dwelling at length 
on some of our prominent national ofiences; and (2.) That 
the other branch of the causes of God's judgments, as seen 
in our national strife, arising from conllicting views and 



FAST-DAY DISCOURSE. 13 

interests of the people among themselves, divided into the 
two great sections now at war, receives, perhaps, as a moral 
question, suited for discussion in the pulpit, too little atten- 
tion, and may, certainly, on this national day, with eminent 
propriety, engage our thoughts. 

On the first branch of the subject — What are our national 
sins against God? — I will state those dwelt upon, on the 
occasion already named. 

1. For our varied national blessings, exceeding, greatly, 
those of most or all other nations, we have not been, as a 
jyeople, grateful to God, from whom cometh, to nations as to 
men, "every good and perfect gift." Ingratitude is the sin. 
But it has gone beyond the negative state. Our blessings 
have been our vain boast, as though we had procured them by 
our own power alone, likening us, as a peo[)le, to Nebuchad- 
nezzar, who vauntingly said: "Is not this great Babylon 
that I have built for the house of the kingdom, by the 
might of my power, and for the honor of my majest}-?" 

2. Worldly j^rosperity, chiefly material, has been the god of 
our idolatry. Gain and gold we have worshipped, leading 
to unscrupulous means to obtain them, and trampling upon 
God's laws and institutions to gratify their inordinate love. 

3. Dishonoring as a nation and a government, the Sabbath, 
systematically and habitually, in several things then speci- 
fied, as, (1.) In our universal mail s^'stem, there being no 
plea for this but its supposed advantage to our material in- 
terests ; a plea that would, if well founded, open every work- 
shop and counting room in the country, and drive the plow 
on every farm. No moral interest can be promoted by it, 
(nor material, in the end,) for it is always a detriment to 
cross God's law ; and his law is the same here for nations as 
for individuals, the exceptions in favor of labor on that day 
being those only of " necessity and mercy." (2.) It was 
then mentioned, too, as showing Sabbath desecration, that 
the present war had been fruitful in illustrations, as seen in 
transporting troops and fighting battles, (all which is wrong, 
unless stern necessity should plead for it,) leading to a pain- 
ful realization of the trite remark, that " war knows no Sab- 
bath." But in this matter a reform has taken place in the 
right quarter, under the order of General McClellan. This 



14 FAST-DAY DISCOURSE. 

order and its already manifest effects are ominous of good, 
and inspire the christian heart with hope and nerve the 
power of pra^'er. 

Th.ese are the sins on which I then chiefly dwelt, their 
importance appearing more manifest, perhaps, from their 
full illustration than in a hare statement of them as now 
given. They do not hy any means exhaust the catalogue. 
There are many others which are offensive to heaven which 
have covered the whole land, and which are closely inter- 
woven with our present civil strife. On some of these it 
would be profitable to dwell, and highly appropriate on the 
present occasion, as they have been long and eminently 
characteristic of us as a people. 

I will, however, mention one of the most obvious of these 
national offences, and most fruitful of our present evils, and 
show, in some measure, how it works. It is the making of 
'political 02?inions the standard and test of moral piincijyles and 
obligations, and the acting out under them of the highest 
duties of the citizen. 

This phase of our public life is illustrated in the iron- 
bound partyism which has so extensively prevailed. It is 
seen in the demands of party, laid upon the people under 
the weight of certain political dogmas, to put partisans into 
office, and then laid upon the men so elected to carry out 
the behests of party. We have been politically educated in 
this, almost from the foundation of our government to the 
present time. To go with our party, to stand upon our plat- 
form, to vote the party ticket, to applaud party measures, 
and to defend all the acts of our party when in power; these 
have been made the standai-d of moral obligation, in tilings 
political. The children of each generation have been taught 
them. They have grown up to manhood under them. They 
have gone to the ballot box under their influence. And the 
deadly fruit of this bitter seed we are now reaping. 

But on this vital matter a better day has dawned. 
Whether its full meridian will be as bright and healthful as 
its genial niorning is yet to be seen. But there is now at 
least one gleam of hope. It is that patriotism is supplant- 
ing party. It was a refreshing sentiment, uttered by the 
present Secretary of State in the Senate of the United States 



FAST-DAY DISCOURSE. 15 

last winter, in his great speech for the Union — a man who 
is regarded as the father of the party now in power, 3-et in 
this utterance rising above all the trammels of party, and a 
sentiment judged by the result in the I^orth to which he 
referred, as creditable to his sagacity as a statesman as to 
his patriotism as a man — that the time was at hand when 
all parties and party platforms would be swept away, and 
when the whole people would be united " to save the coun- 
try in a party of the Union." Ilis prediction is realized ; 
and God be thanked that there is patriotism enough left 
among the masses of the people to rise above the shackles 
of party, at such a time as this. 

Following out the corrupt principle to which I have re- 
ferred — making party dogmas the moral test of political 
obligations — we find another illustration of it, fruitful of 
evil. It is the elevation of men to the high places of power, 
covered with both moral and political corruption. If men's 
political dogmas were right, if they were of the party, if 
they stood square upon the platform, even though that 
polygonal structure were so skilfully made that it had a 
front on every side to delude the simple, it was regarded as 
a moral duty to give them our suffrage. Even serious 
minded men — relisrious men — have been willins: to vote for 
any party man, regularly nominated, though bankrupt in 
every moral principle relating to private or public life. I 
say not this of any particular partj', but this has been too 
much a characteristic of our people, and we are now eating 
of the bitter fruit of our own doings. 

Following out this dogma still further, and it comes to 
this — that the government, conducted by an administration 
elevated to power solely by party, must be conducted, in all 
its departments, upon partisan principles and for partisan 
objects. This is as well understood, and the obligation is as 
fully recognized, as though it were stipulated in the bond 
and ratified by oath and seal. Its patronage must be given 
to partisans. The judicial ermine in our highest court, even 
upon the shoulders of the chief justice, must adorn the par- 
tisan. Offices at home and abroad must be filled by parti- 
sans, for " to the victors belong the spoils." We have been 
represented among all the nations of the world upon this 



16 FAST-DAY DISCOURSE. 

principle. Drunkards, gamblers, and men who have disre- 
garded all the sanctities of domestic life, have been honored 
by the Kepublic which they have disgraced, at the Courts of 
the despotisms of the Old World. If they have been repu- 
diated by their constituents at home, it has only furnished 
the reason why they should be commissioned abroad. The 
government of this free Republic, through its places of honor 
and emolument, has not been regarded as made for the people, 
but for politicians, and as really so as the governments of 
Europe have been regarded as made for the crowned heads 
that administer them. This is the principle which has gov- 
erned party conventions, and which, through the subtlety 
and power of party organizations, has extensively governed 
the ballot box. 

These are but a few of the more palpable illustrations, 
which start up on every hand, of the corrupt principle of 
making partisan opinions and partisan action the test of the 
obligation of the citizen, in the exercise of the right of suf- 
frage, one of the very highest and most sacred of all his 
public duties. 

Can we marvel, then, that under such a recognized system 
of political virtue we have become mournfully corrupt as a 
nation, and that our oflence is rank and smells to heaven? 
Could it be possible, under the prevalence of such a prin- 
ciple, that any part of the body politic should escape demor- 
alization? Prompted by such power, could any law of God 
successfully withstand assault, if it should presume to stand 
in the way of reaching partisan ends ? Or could any interest 
of humanity be safe, if challenged to such a contest? Can 
we wonder, then, that under such a code of political action, 
we should now be plunged into civil war? Can we not see, 
in this, at least one of the causes, and that not the least 
potent, of our present national strife? — that the section now 
in revolt, which, through partisan organization, has managed 
the government nearly from its origin, enjoying largely its 
honors and emoluments in civil and military life, though an 
extreme minority of the people, should now, through its poli- 
tical leaders, when they see the sceptre departing from their 
hands forever, determine to overthrow the government by 
an armed rebellion in several of the States? Are we sur- 



FAST-DAY DISCOURSE. 17 

prized at this? Yes ! at this we may stand amazed — and so 
does the whole work!. — making all due allowance, too, for 
the personal and political corruption of human nature, when 
we scan the magnitude and determination of this bloody 
attempt to overturn the best government for the largest 
happiness of man, admitting all its defects of administra- 
tion, upon which the sun has ever shone. I seriously doubt 
whether the corruption of devils is too deep to prevent thera 
from standing aghast in all the caverns of hell, at this folly, 
this infatuation, this very- madness of wickedness, in the 
demagogues of the nation to eft'ect this purpose ! You may 
search all the records of history for a parallel, and you will not 
find it, for such an unwarranted and wide-spread rebellion. 

And this brings me directly to state some of the causes in 
the other general branch of the subject, which have occa- 
sioned our present strife, — 

II. Causes arising from conflicting views and interests of 
THE People, as divided into the two great sections now at 

WAR. 

What are these causes ? Some think they iind them in 
the loss of political power and patronage sustained by the 
South, in the change of the Federal administration ; or in 
their complaints about tarittij, and their desire for free trade; 
or in the doctrine of State rights, to which the South is 
attached, and to which they think the North has not due 
regard ; or in their wish for a stronger government, in a 
limited monarchy, or at least with a privileged aristocrasy; 
or in a separate confederacy, by which they can regulate all 
these and a thousand other questions at pleasure, in despite 
of the power of the Korth, now grown great, and no longer 
controllable. 

Some of these are without doubt proximate and even 
powerful causes. But there is one which underlies them all, 
the secret spring of the whole movement. What is the great 
cause which stimulates the South in its action, as given on 
the very best authority by the South itself? It is a cause 
which takes various shapes of statement, suited to the pres- 
sure of the moment, but always culminating in this — io ixre- 
serve, 'perpetuate, and extend the institution of Negro Slavery in 
this land. 

2 



18 FAST-DAY DISCOURSE. 

The object and limits of this discourse do not allow me to 
argue upon the right and wrong of this system. Nor is it 
necessary. I hold to the old doctrine of the fathers — a doc- 
trine, till within a few years, universal in this country, in 
Church and State — that it is a system, politically, socially, 
and morally, evil and that continually, to both races con- 
cerned in it, and that it ought, just as soon as it will be for 
the interests of all concerned, to be brought to an end. I 
have in my library much of the literature of the South of 
modern days, on the subject of slavery, from the huge oc- 
tavo to the smaller volume, periodicals, sermons, pamphlets, 
newspapers, from Cobb, and Bledsoe, and Smylie, and 
Pahner, and Thornwell, and many others. I have examined 
their arguments attentively, and some of these writers are 
men of master mind. If any person can make the worse 
appear the better reason it is they. I am not convinced by 
them; perhaps it is my fault. Besides this, I have lived 
where the system prevails, in the extreme South, in Missis- 
sippi and Xew Orleans, for the larger part of my profes- 
sional life. I have seen it in city and country, at work and 
in recreation, upon the plantation and in the household, in 
the cabin and in the church, at home and abroad, and I am 
not aware that I have yet to learn anything new about 
American slavery as a system. And yet, I am free to say, 
that the more I have known of it, the longer I have lived 
among it, and the more T have read about it, the firmer is 
my conviction that the old doctrine of the fathers is correct, 
and that the modern doctrine of its divinity is another 
gospel and a pestilent heresy. This conviction is only the 
more strengthened, when I see that the radical caiisr, assigned 
by the South itself, for overthrowing the authority among 
them of the Federal Government, is to preserve, perpetuate, 
and extend the system in this fair land, until, perchance, the 
dream and boast of the late Secretary of State of the South- 
ern Confederacy, in the Senate of the United States, shall 
be realized, that he would yet call the roll of his slaves at 
the foot of the Bunker Hill monument. 

Does any one ask for the proof that this is the main cause 
which the South itself assigns for its attempted revolution? 
It is found, in one form or another, in the writings and 



FAST-DAY DISCOURSE. 19 

speeches of their leading men in Church and State, and in 
the Constitution they have framed. Dr. Palmer is a repre- 
sentative man of the Southern Church, a native of South 
Carolina, and a resident of New-Orleans. In his Thanks- 
giving Discourse of last November, in urging the South to 
independent political action, he says it is her great providen-' 
tial mission to "conserve and perpetuate the system," and this 
is his grand argument for secession,* Alexander IT. Stephens 
is a representative man among Southern statesmen. He 
rejoices in the establishment of the Southern Confederacy, be- 
cause negro slavery is made the " corner stone" on which the 
edifice rests ; and he deems it a worthy theme for their public 
self-gratulation, that theirs is the first great civilized nation 
which has rested on such a basis.f For this same purpose, 
they have modified their supreme organic law ; and the most 
prominent of the changes made in their Constitution from 
the old one, is in the immunities and safeguards granted to 
the institution of slavery. The proof then is ample — they 
being witnesses — that this is the radical cause of their revolt, 
which underlies all others. 

Granting, then, this to be the cause, what was there in the 
condition of the country, or in the action of the government, 
which could be deemed sufficient to justify the revolt, even 
as viewed by themselves, in order to secure the institution from 
supposed danger ? In giving the answer to this question, I 
speak advisedly. I have read their most elaborate defences 
of the movement, from their public " Declaration of Inde- 
pendence," as they term it, to the utterances of their states- 
men and divines. They do not plead any action of the 
Federal Government in justification, either in its Executive, 
Legislative, or Judicial Departments. When this revolt 
began, each department was under the control of the party 
with which tbe large majority of the South had always 
acted ; and yet, it is against this Government alone — its Con- 
stitution, Laws, and authority — that the rebellion is waged. 
What, then, is the plea which they make? AVhen their dis- 
quisitions are put into the crucible and reduced to their last 
analysis, it comes to this — the apprehension, pretended or 
real, that the administration coming into power, four months 
after the rebellion was inaugurated, would, or might, wage 

* See Appendix, Note A. t See Appendix, Note B. 



20 FAST-DAY DISCOURSE. 

war upon, or exert its influence in some way against, the 
institution of slavery; and this, too, when all departments 
of the Government but the Executive, would still be in their 
own hands. This is tlje plea, and tlie whole of it, fairly 
stated, leading Southern men being the sworn witnesses. 
And this plea they urged, and acted upon, and filled the 
whole South with their sophistry to make out a case, when 
it was patent to all the world, that such a purpose in the 
party coming into power, w^as denied over and over again, 
in the most explicit terms, and in all the possible official 
forms known to the case, from the declarations of Conven- 
tions and the President elect down to all its leading public 
men ; and no tongue or pen was ever authorized to utter the 
contrary of these denials — to say nothing of the impassable 
impediments oflered in the Constitution and Laws to any 
such action. And yet, they inaugurate this astounding, 
bloody revolution, against this mild and free Government of 
the Peojyle, in the face of all this testimony to disprove their 
imaginary ajp'prehension — the only plea they venture to ofter ! 
Was ever such an instance heard of, since rebellion and rev- 
olution were terms known in the vocabulury of man? * 

And what would be, reasonably, their prospect of success 
in preserving the institution of slavery, should they succeed 
in establishing their Southern Government? The answer to 
this is best furnished in the sagacious words of an old Vir- 
ginian spoken to me last winter, a man who has been in the 
Congress of the United States. "1 am amazed," said he, in 
substance, " at the infatuation of Southern men, in their 
supposing they can save the institution of slavery by dis- 
solving the Union. Why," said he, "the Constitution and 
the Union are wliat have made it controllable, profitable, 
and safe. It could not have lived to this day without them. 
If they dissolve the Union, I fear it will speedily come to an 
end and go down in violence and blood ! " This is valuable 
testimony, and it accords with what is palpable to common 
observation. And this is One of the items in the account 
which induces the belief that the men who are leading on 
this movement are covered with judicial blindness, and 
that through this very blindness God may bring to an end 
that which they would preserve, illustrating also the heathen 

* See Appendix, Note C. 



FAST-DAY DISCOURSE. 21 

proverb, that, "Whom the gods wish to destroy the}' first 
make mad." 

In attempting to give color to the apprehension referred to, 
and in justification of the revolt by reason of it, it was said 
by the Southern leaders, that the present generation of the 
North have been for thirty years under a process of educa- 
tion which has at length totally abolitionized the people, 
that they are about to have control of the government, and 
that is what we fear at the South. 

To none but the inebriate does the ground appear to be 
reeling. The change in sentiment with regard to slavery, 
is in the South rather than in the Xorth. Forty-three 
years ago last May, the General Assembly of the Presby- 
terian Church put forth an elaborate paper on slavery. * It 
fairly represents what was then the general sentiment of 
the country, in the Church and the State, and iu both sec- 
tions of the Union. The paper was drawn up by Dr. Bax- 
ter of Virginia, and was adopted by the Assembly unani- 
mously, every Southern and every I^orthern man voting 
for it. It is decidedly opposed to the system, and so strong 
in its statements that the South of to-day pronounce it an 
abolition document, and reject it with scorn. The present 
sentiment of the Presbyterian Church in the Il^Torth, though 
now as ever opposed to slavery, is not unanimously accord- 
ant with the teachings of that document. The few among 
the people of the North who have gone to the utmost verge 
of opposition to the system — the ultra abolitionists, as they 
are termed — are more than overbalanced, in number and in- 
fluence, by those holding views more conservative or pro- 
slavery, than the paper referred to ; while yet, now as then, 
and then as now, and always, the general sentiment of the 
North concerning the sj^stem, has been and is just what the 
general sentiment of the South was, until within a compara- 
tively few years, v'u. : — that slavery was an evil to both races, 
political, social, moral, entire. The proof of this you will 
not ask me to give. The world knows it by heart 

"While, then, the North stands ou this platform to-day, 
while the evil of the system is the pole-star of her sentiment, 
the South has completely boxed the compass ; and now, with 
her people, the essential goodness and divinity of the system 

* See AppeoJix, Note D, 



22 FAST-DAY DISCOURSE. 

iiiul the relation of master and slave as sncli, constitute tlie 
corner-stone of their so-called government, an axiom in their 
political economy, the doctrine tanght in their schools, and 
the theology preached in their pulpits. They are reeling 
and staggering under the intoxication of the teachings by 
"which they have been but too willingly drugged — and lo ! 
they look up and think the whole world but themselves is 
turned upside down ! 

Precisely analogous to the change which has taken place 
in the Southern mind under the teaching of some of her 
divines, respecting the merits of the system of slavery, is the 
change wliich has occurred there, under the lead of certain 
of her statesmen, touching the relations of the Federal Gov- 
ernment and the Federal Constitution to that system. By 
all the political fathers, slavery was regarded as an evil, and 
destined, sooner or later, to come to an end. And although 
they made no provision in the Federal Constitution for its 
termination — it being regarded as a State institution, to be 
regulated, perpetuated, or ended, b}' State authority — yet, 
that Constitution was formed by men who with great una- 
nimity held such a sentiment. You do not ask me to stop 
to give you the proof of this here. Every one who reads 
knows it to be true. The Vice President of the Southern 
Confederacy admits it, in one of liis elaborate harangues, 
made since the Southern revolt commenced. * Can it be 
supposed, then, as a possible thing, that what has been 
claimed for the Constitution as its original intent and mean- 
ing, in these latter days, is well founded? — that the Consti- 
tution carries slavery wherever it goes, into all the Terri- 
tories of the land? One of the prime canons for the inter- 
pretation of any written document, executed in good faith, 
is, that it is to be construed according to the intended mean- 
ing of its authors, if that moaning can be ascertained. Tried 
by this rule, was the Constitution intended to grant what 
the Soutli now claim upon the point in question? They 
liold to the principle of strict construction. Do they iind 
this doctrine there taught? Passing by the well known 
sentiments of the fathers upon slavery, if we wished to show 

* An extract from this speech is given in Appendix, Note B. 



FAST-DAY DISCOURSE. 23 

how those viewed the Constitution who made it — and who 
should know what it was intended to grant, if not they? — 
and to show how tlieir sons of each succeeding generation 
have viewed it until within a very few years [)ast, it would 
only be necessary to note the fact, that thirteen several times 
since the origin of the government, beginning with the ad- 
ministration of General Washington and coming down to 
that of Mr. Polk, has the Congress of. the United States de- 
liberately exercised the power, by positive enactment of law, 
prohibiting, limiting, and circumscribing slavery, in some of 
the Territories of the common government. * The South, 
however, here as in regard to the merits of the system, have 
revolutionized their opinions, since they have enthroned and 
under the golden reign of the fibrous King; and now they 
claim, as the very letter and spirit of the supreme organic 
law, that it carries their system wherever the Constitution 
reaches, f 

Andjust here, in a nut-shell, stripped of all the sophistry 
of special pleading, is the germ of the rebellion. The South- 
ren leaders have insisted for the last few years, prompted and 
backed by the amazing profits of the great Southern staple, 
that the Government, Legislative, Judicial and Executive, 
should be administered according to tlieir modern views, — 
new, and entirely unsupported by the Constitution, — and 
the}' have been wonderfully successful in carrying their 
point ; until now within a twelvemonth, when they find a 
spirit waked up in the land, determined to resist these mani- 
fest aggressions, turn back the tide of sentiment which had 
well nigh revolutionized the Government, and restore the 
Constitution to its true intent and policy upon the platform 
of the fathers, they deliberately determine to break up the 
Government, even at the hazard of civil war! This is the 
judgment which will enter into the records of history, and 
this the verdict which will be universal with posterity. Was 

^Though tliei'e is a slight inaccuracy here — not at all, however, affecting the 
argument — I prefer to let the language stand just as preached. The error con- 
sists in confounding later with earlier action. The " tliirteen times" covers a 
period beginning j>revious to the ado|Hion of the present Constitution. A 
sufficiently full exhibition of the facts may be found in the Appendix Note E. 

t See Appendix, Note F. 



24 FAST-DAY DISCOURSE. 

there over a more barefaced and gigantic iniquity enacted 
under the light of the heavens? 

It is pUxin to see from tliis what the South is fighting for. 
And now on the other hand, what is the North fighting for? 
It is told in a word. We are aiming to save the life oe the 
Natiok', so ruthlessl}' attacked. Ours is a ^(/c??62fe warfare. 
We are seeking to maintain our honor, our glory, our good 
name, even our existence, among the nations of the earth. 
Did we not seriously attempt this — meeting their aggression 
of war by force of arms — we should certainly receive, and 
we should justly merit, the contempt of the world ; and I am 
just as clear in the conviction that we should incur tlie dis- 
pleasure of God ! 

I have now indicated what I deem to be the causes under 
the second branch of the subject — all culminating in one — 
for the present rebellion. They are quite sufficient to bring 
down upon us the sorest judgments of God, and in view of 
them we should be bowed in the very dust of humiliation. 
Let us in the next and last place, — 

III. Look at the conduct of our Public Men, as exhibit- 
ing CRIMES FOR which WE AS A IN'aTION SUFFER, AND WHICH 
SHOULD CAUSE SHAME AND SORROW. 

This is, most certainly, a point of the general subject 
which claims earnest attention ; and I honestly confess, that, 
in the conduct it reveals in our public men, and the pleas 
they make to justify it, it presents to my own mind, the most 
profound matter for national humiliation and shame, before 
earth and heaven, that this day of humiliation suggests. 

The public men of a nation, civil and military, are its prop- 
erty. Tlicir greatness, and honor, and fame, belong to the 
nation. They are a part of its own glory. Or their imbe- 
cility, crimes, meanness and treachery, contribute to the 
shame of the nation, to its dishonor and reproach among 
mankind. These are but common and universally accepted 
truths. Tried by them, what is our national humiliation to- 
day, before all the earth! The time was when to be an 
"American citizen" was a better passport among men, than 
it once was to be a citizen of Rome ; and the American name 
was far more dearly loved, if not feared, than was ever that 
of Rome. But for nearly a twelvemonth past, how has it 



PAST-DAY DISCOURSE. 25 

been cast out across the Atlantic, with sneers and contempt! 
But it need not affect us so painfully that a revolution is 
attempted, though even that were sufficient cause for shame, 
considerino^ our excellent form of government. Revolutions, 
however, frequently occur in the world ; but that this rebel- 
lion should have revealed such conduct in so many of our 
public men, from the President of the United States down, 
is matter for deep mortification and sorrow. It has no par- 
allel, exhibiting such magnificent proportions, in the whole 
history of the world, and is well nigh enough to make an 
American ashamed of his country. The only redeeming fea- 
ture of the case is, that the nation has now arisen like a giant 
refreshed with sleep, and has determined to throw oft' her 
lethargy, and to purge out this corruption by applying the 
only remedy the disease admits. 

Going back to last December, and what a picture did our 
public men present! Petrified imbecility sat in the Presi- 
dential chair. Standing around it was schooled and chronic 
corruption in nearly every post in the Cabinet. The vene- 
rable Secretary of State was an honored exception. But in 
the Treasury, in the War, in the ISTavy, and in the Interior 
Departments, were men eating the bread and wearing the 
official robes of the Government, men who had taken a sol- 
emn oath to support the Constitution, and yet men who for 
years were using the knowledge, the facilities, the power, 
which all the more unsuspectingly their official station gave 
them, to undermine the Government, to overthrow the Con- 
stitution, to organize against it an armed rebellion, and — as 
may appear when all the documents shall come out, now in 
the possession of the Executive authority — to seize upon 
the capital itself, to prevent the induction of an administra- 
tion constitutionally elected, and to inaugurate a Rebel 
Government in its very stead and place ! Thanks, under 
God, be to one man, that a part of this programme failed — 
the Lieutenant General of the Army. 

Now, can you find a counterpart to this conduct in public 
men, in all your knowledge of history, considering the form 
and character of our Government, and the blessings to the 
people at large, which it secures ? Was there ever such 
thieving, and robbery, and perjury, and treachery to trust and 



26 FA ST- DAY DISCOURSE. 

station — such a fitting combination of malice and meanness — 
in such a cluster of the rulers of any people? coming, too, 
from that section of the country which claims a monopoly of 
all the honor and high-bearing and chivalry which the land 
contains? — a section where so soon and so extensively this 
high example set them at the capital was so faithfully copied 
by the rulers and the people of several of the States? — and 
while, moreover, they had not even yet, and did not for 
months afterwards, claim, at least before the public, that they 
were engaged in revolution, but were only enacting "se-ces- 
sion," falling back upon their rights within the Constitution; 
and that in seizing forts, arsenals, ships, mints, custom- 
houses, and public money, they were only exercising a kind 
and paternal care over the property and in behalf of the Fed- 
eral Government, in its time of peculiar trial and need ! Oh ! 
methinks there is in these familiar facts — so familiar and so 
often repeated in the months which have followed that they 
have lost their effect upon us — enough to call for 2k forty days' 
season of fasting and humiliation. These were public men. 
This is the nation's dishonor and shame. 

And then, a little later, when State after State enacted 
their paper secession, how rapidly followed the defection of 
our public men, in both branches of the National Legislature, 
utterly repudiating the solemn oath to support the Federal 
Constitution which each member takes when entering upon 
his public duties, and giving all the influence of their abilities 
and station iu aid of the rebellion. And what a mournful 
spectacle was presented by the Army and Navy, when so 
man}' men who had been distinguished in the service of the 
country, could so readily turn false to their special oaths of 
allegiance which the service requires, laying off this allegiance 
and swearing fealty to the powers in revolt, with the ease of 
changing one garment for another ; and stopping not short 
of taking up arms, as leaders of the rebel forces, against a 
Government which had educated them, fed them, clothed 
thcni, and given them all their honor and fame, and against 
which not one of thcni could say he had an}- coniphiint ! 
Such full-ripened IVuits of criminality are not the growth of 
a night. They arc the results of a corruption whose fester- 
ing loathsomeness has been long and deeply seated iu the 



FAST-DAY DISCOURSE. 27 

body politic. What the prophet said of individual man spir- 
itually, we may apply to the nation at large both morally and 
politically, when such men are its representatives; and it 
shows how pressing is the need of national repentance, and a 
" sacrifice of righteousness :" " The whole head is sick and 
the whole heart faint ; from the sole of the foot even unto 
the head there is no soundness in it, but wounds, and bruises, 
and putrifying sores; they have not been closed, neither 
bound up, neither mollified with ointment." 

But a reason can be given for any course of action. "When 
we search for the reasons by which these men justify their 
defection, we find they are two — one of a public and the 
other of a personal nature. The public one is, that State 
allegiance is superior to l^ational, or that there is no other 
than State allegiance ; therefore, these acts are justifiable and 
even demanded. Consequently, when my State secedes, it 
is my duty to follow it. That is the argument — brief, but 
potential. 

There is a delectable sublimation of political philosophy 
in this, up to the heights of which no poor foreigner has yet 
been able to aspire. "When he comes from fatherland to 
enjoy the blessings of our Republic, he takes an oath of alle- 
giance to the Federal Government, and no other. He never 
knows any other allegiance, in whatever part of the country 
he chooses to live. No State in the Union" administers such 
an oath as a term of citizenship. It is a matter which 
belongs wholly to the Federal Government. State allegiance, 
to the ignoring of ]Srational, is a modern invention, to meet 
the emergencies of dislo3'alty. The fathers knew nothing of 
it. The peculiar benefits of this newly-discovered political 
wisdom are reserved for those who are "to the manor born," 
making a distinction among citizens unknown and repugnant 
to the genius of our system of government, the special pro- 
duet of this age, and making what would be treason in those 
born elsewhere, a high public virtue in the native-born 
citizen. Did absurdity ever reach a higher pitch? 

Among the most humiliating exhibitions to a looker-on, 
connected with this question of allegiance, was to observe, as 
it was my misfortune to do, one of the Senators from Vir- 
ginia and another from Texas, stand in their places in the 



28 FAST- DAY DISCOURSE. 

Senate last winter, while holding their seats and under their 
oaths as Senators, and make it their boast in the face of the 
Senate that thej' owed no allegiance to any Government but 
that of their respective States. And yet, they sat there day 
after day, and deliberated and, voted upon public measures, 
aiding or defeating them by, their votes, until the end of 
the session. A Senator or a Representative, renews his oath 
to support the Constitution at the beginning of each new 
term to each respectively. Senator Mason had probably 
taken that oath on the floor of the Senate at least three or 
four times successively. He had then either discovered and 
adopted the doctrine of State allegiance recently, or his base- 
ness must stand without a gage. But whether the discovery 
was recent or remote, these men were at one and the same 
moment acting under their oaths to support the Constitution 
while using their official power to destroy the Government, 
and making an open boast of their infamy and casting defi- 
ance in the teeth of their peers in the highest legislative hall 
of the nation. Such men, who can deliberately and shame- 
lessly in this manner oflSeially trample upon their solemn 
appeals to God — and in these things they are but represent- 
ative men of a large class — are ready for any deeds of dark- 
ness. Is there not cause for humiliation in the conduct of 
our public men? Were ever such things heard of before? 
Was ever such forbearance shown? Any other Government 
than ours would have suspended those men between earth 
and heaven, on the day of these utterances, before the sun 
went down.* 

* The obligations of allegiance, and the rights and immunities of the citizen 
nndei- that allegiance, have hitherto been supposed to be correlatives. But 
Southern chivalry lias changed all that. To show how Senator Mason regards 
the rights of the citizen, even under his pet doctrine of State allegiance, we 
need only give an extract from his letter to the people of Virginia, published 
in tlie Winchester Virffinian junt before the election in that State on the question 
of her secession, prompted by certain inquiri6s which had been put to him. 
We give an entire paragraph: "If it be asked, wliat are those to do who in 
their consciences can not vote to separate Virginia from the United States? 
the answer is simple and plain: honor and duty alike require that they siiould 
not vote on the question; if they retain such opinions they must leave the 
State." This is worthy of Austria. Talk about "honor,' when uttering such 
an opinion upon an election f Can any one believe that such a man has the 
remotest conception of tlie sentiment of "honor," or the least regard for the 
doctrine of ''allegiance" wliether State or National, or any manner of concern 
for the rights of any body, wlien he can deliberately pen such a paragraph? 
Thifl is Virginia chivalry] 



FAST-DAT DISCOURSE. 29 

Such are the men who are leading on this rebellion. It is 
under the influence of such a doctrine that it is prosecuted. 
But it is no small consolation to us in helping on the present 
war, that this is one of the pestiferous heresies which will be 
forever put to rest. 

Beyond this public reason is a personal one which influ- 
ences many to renounce their allegiance to the Federal Gov- 
ernment, and follow their respective States out of the Union. 
A particular State is the place of their birth. When it 
secedes they must go with it, wherever they may be residing. 
That is the argument. Or their relatives and friends are 
there; and hence go their sympathies with the cause, per- 
haps their active aid, or they go in person. Or, one may say, 
my wife was born there, and her relatives and friends are 
there ; hence I must go. This is the personal argument. 

This, in many cases, has sundered the bonds between 
ofiicers of the Army and Navy and the Federal Government, 
has led them to repudiate their oaths and renounce their 
allegiance. Is not this a slender excuse by which to justify 
the crime of treason? — a narrow foundation on which to 
rear the superstructure of a stupendous rebellion against any 
government, and especially against such a government as 
ours? And yet this plea has satisfied thousands. It has 
been uttered in due form and published to the world. Be- 
sides officers of the government who have acted upon it, 
ministers of the Gospel have given up their charges at the 
North, and have gone to the States of their nativity, which 
have seceded ; or they have gone because their relatives were 
there, or their wives came from there; thus giving, for such 
reasons, their countenance to the treason and rebellion of 
others, and enacting their own. Is not this, too, a cause for 
deep humiliation ? 

I am by no means oblivious to the power which ties of 
kindred may justly exert to draw relatives and friends 
together in times of peril. Nor would I for one moment 
causelessly frown upon these better feelings of our nature, 
though they should exhibit human weakness and sometimes 
lead astray. But there is a great and fatal error here of a 
moral bearing which needs correcting. I hear it upon the 
lips of men and women frequently. It involves a radical 



30 FAST-DAY DISCOURSE. 

moral principle, whose workings are doing much damage in 
social life, and to the public welfare. It is something like 
this : It seems to be taken for granted, in this public issue 
of loyalty with treason, that a Southern man, because he is 
a Southern man, is much less culpable for taking the Southern 
side of this question, than a I^orthern man would be; and 
therefore, it is expected as natural, extenuated, justilied, that 
a native-born Southerner, living in the North, should give 
up his business and his home — if a clergyman, that he should 
resign his charge — and go and cast in his lot with the South, 
with his relatives and friends; whereas, it would be a greater 
moral wrong for a Northern man to take this course in aid 
of the South, simply because his friends are not found there. 
Hence, too, we find deeper censure cast upon Northern men 
who were residing at the South when this issue was joined, 
and who have given in their adhesion to the Southern Gov- 
ernment, than are cast upon men born there. " Shame on 
them" says one, " that they should abet treason, fur they 
Avere born on Northern soil, and their friends are here." 
And thus, the whole question of moral principle and moral 
obligation, involved in this momentous issue, is made to turn, 
either North or South, as the case may be, upon the mere 
incidents of birth and relationship. Now, if these are your 
views, you must revise them, or you do a damage to yourself 
by indulging them, a damage to truth, to moral principle, 
and to the public weal. The question here involved is simply 
one of right and wrong. God has not constituted these 
family relationships so as to allow us to make the affection 
aud sympathy which these ties beget the test of duty in such 
a great issue as this, nor indeed the test of duty in any thing 
else, morally considered. I have no right, nor am 1 under 
any obligation, (though some persons seem strangely to sup- 
pose they are,) with the law and gospel of God before me, 
to follow my State to perdition if she chooses to go there, 
simply because I was born within her jurisdiction, nor to 
follow her out of the Union for such a reason. Nor have I 
any right, nor am I under any obligation, to follow my father 
or mother, brother or sister, wife or child, in any course 
involving right and wrong, simply because they are united 
to me by the ties of blood. On this principle, why are they 



FAST-DAY DISCOURSE. 31 

not under quite as mucli obligation to come with me, as I 
am to go Avith them ? Perhaps their worldly interests, their 
business relations, or something of the kind, will not admit 
of it. Is, then, this the principle on which we shall solve a 
great question of public duty ? Must it turn upon a mere 
matter of personal convenience ? 

We may rest assured that God has made family ties for 
another purpose, and not to confuse the judgment and blind 
the conscience on questions of moral obligation. This whole 
matter of public duty is to be decided upon its own intrinsic 
merits, according to the principles involved in the case, and 
without regard to where a man was born, or where he lives, 
or whether he has a relative on earth. It is the duty of 
mem as a citizen, as a member of the body politic, that is here 
concerned, and nothing more. He who does not acknowl- 
edge this has not learned the moral alphabet. 

I can respect a man who dilters from me, even radically, 
on a question which he claims to have examined and judged 
upon its merits, for I possess no infallibility. I can respect 
a Northern man just as f ally as I can a Southern man, who 
may not agree with me upon the present issue of loyalt}^ and 
treason — though he might name it diiferently — viewing, as 
I suppose he may, the whole case from his own peculiar 
stand point ; though I must confess that with regard to both 
of them the case in my judgment is too plain to admit of but 
one opinion. But I can have very little respect for public 
men who suspend the question of their duty to the Govern- 
ment, and make the issue of loyalty and treason turn upon 
lines of latitude or family relationships. And I have felt 
especially ashamed of my brethren of the ministerial profes- 
sion, when I have seen so many of them give up their 
charges at the ISTorth and turn their speed}' feet to the South, 
and publish to the world the reason, substantially, that they 
were born in Virginia, or Georgia, or Carolina, and they 
must follow their State; or that their relatives are there, 
their sympathies are with them, and they must go where 
they lead ! 

If these men are children, or imbeciles — in their minority 
and irresponsible — and if they liave wandered too far from 
home, and are overtaken in an unwary moment by an 



32 FAST-DAY DISCOURSE. 

unexpected storm, let them hie to their homes again, go back 
to their guardians and to the arms of tlieir mothers and 
nurses for protection, and we will pray for their safe arrival 
and that they may never wander more. But if they have 
come to man's estate — if they have a commission from God 
to stand in the pulpit and teach the people — then for the 
credit of the ministr}^, for the honor of human nature, let 
them not in a time of civil war, for reasons which ought to 
shame boys of fifteen years of age, turn their backs upon 
their country and join the standard of a bloody rebellion, 
and meekly publish such reasons from their pulpits and give 
them to the world. If ever devils laugh in hell, it is over 
such a spectacle as this ! Have we not, in the conduct of 
public men, causes for national huiuilialion ? 

It is, indeed, upon the clergy of the South that a very 
large share of the responsibility rests for the inauguration 
of the revolution there in progress. I speak by the record, 
and prove it from their own lips and pens. Would that 
there were time to give you the evidence in detail, but there 
is not. They claim for themselves the credit. It is freely 
accorded to them by Southern statesmen. They were the 
first to change their opinions and to proclaim the divinity of 
slavery ; the State has but followed in their wake. '■'' They 
took the lead in many instances, and in others early rallied 
around the politicians of the South, in this rebellion ; and 
on every hand it is claimed and conceded, that, without the 
influence of the clergy, leading on the church, they could not 
have succeeded in arousing the masses of the people, f If 
the clergy had even stood aloof from the movement — if not . 
able to muster moral courage to oppose it — we might have 
had for them some charity. But they threw themselves into 
the van — and they glory in it. Dr. Talmer, one of the most 
eloquent divines of the age, preached his famous secession 
sermon in New-Orleans on the 29th of November, nearly 
cue full month before South Carolina seceded, and while as 
yet the current of public opinion in the Crescent City was 
against secession, as evidenced in Conventions there held 
afterwards, and yet he mounted the very crest of the com- 

♦ See Appendix, Note G. t t^ee Appendix, >"otc II. 



FAST-DAY DISCOURSE. 33 

ing wave and became there the King of the storm. Dr. 
Thornwell wrote in December his elaborate defence of seces- 
sion, and published it in January in the Southern Presby- 
terian Quarterly Review. This was regarded by politicians 
as by far the ablest paper ever written on the subject; and 
edition after edition was printed, as also of Dr. Palmer's 
sermon, and sown broadcast through the South.* 

What class of men, then, are the most guilty to-day for 
this wicked rebellion? Among divines I name such men as 
these. One holds tlie pen of a ready writer anil wields the 
sabre of a keen dialectitian. The other, for the elocpience 
of impassioned declamation, has few equals in Church or 
State. I name also the Right Reverend Bishop I'olk, now 
a Major General in the Soutiiern army. Such men have a 
different sphere of operation from that of the political denui- 
gogue among the rabble which make up the staple of mobs. 
The^' sway by their talents, their social afJinities, their moral 
character, tbeir ecclesiastical position, and their general in- 
flueuce, the best and the most influential part of the com- 
munity. They have waved their magic wand and twined 
these leading multitudes into the bloody path of rebellion. 

On the same principle, who of all the statesmen of the 
South bears oft" the palm of guilt for ensnaring large num- 
hers of the best citizens in the meshes of treason ? It is not 
your hot-blooded Keitt, and your blustering Toombs, and 
your cool and calculating Davis, though the latter has 
always been a plotter of disunion. It is Alexander 11. 
Stephens. Nor let this provoke a smile. The foremost 
statesman of the South for ability, and purity of private and 
public life; up to a late period when his State was in her 
tribulation, and while sitting in her Couveutiou, a Union 
man still ; opposing with unanswerable logic before the 
Georgia Legislature, last November, her secession, attribut- 
ing her prosperity to the Union, and denying that there was 
any cause for her leaving it; and yet, Anally falling in with 
the tide and becoming the most vigorous of the oarsmen. 
These are the reasons why he occupies the unenviable posi- 
tion I have named. When tinding the torrent irresistible, 
he could, with becoming grace and as an honest man, have 

* Extracts from both, Appendix A. and C. 

3 



34 FAST-DAY DISCOURSE. 

bowed before tlie storm and retired to private life. But tlie 
glitter of ofHeo and power had too strong attractions even 
for liim, and lience he soon turns up the second in position i!i 
their Government but the first in eminent ability, to become 
the leading orator for secession, to battle against his own 
former impregnable arguments, and to drag the better classes 
iu the trail of his treason. 

These arc the men, if any in the land, who for their obliv- 
iousness to their moral obligations in this liighest crime 
known against the State, and for their ability and success in 
plotting its overthrow, first of any richly deserve the halter. 
Is there not abundant cause for humiliation on account of 
the defection of our public men? 

And is there not in the causeless inception and peculiar 
character as illustrated iu the entire history and progress of 
this Southern movement, enough to stimulate tho loyal to 
put down and punish such iniquity for the sake of this and 
coming generations? — quite enough, as put into the lii.)s 
of one of ancient times, when he would avenge his owh 
" wrongs," 

"To stir a fever in the blood of ago, 
And make the infants sinews strong as steel?" 

There have been two men in our history liolding the 
second office within the gift of the people, who have been 
regarded as guilty of the crime of treason. One was Vice 
President under Jefferson, and has long since passed from 
the stage. The other is the grandson of the Attorney Gen- 
eral in Jefferson's Cabinet, of an honored ancestry, of highly 
lionorable and distinguished family connections now living, 
in the persons of several of the ablest divines in our own 
church, and himself now holding a seat iu the Senate of the 
United States. Behold him to-day ! under the lashings of a 
guilty conscience, fleeing like a thief in the night, from his 
home iu his native State, our nearest Southern sister, that 
he may escape the vengeance of the law, and heading an 
armed baiul of marauders to make w^ar upon his own people 
who have three several times by overwhelming majorities 
voted against secession, and to make war upon that Govern- 
ment which has lavished upon him its distinguished honors! 
Ilis name will hereafter be liidccd with that of Burr, while 
•that of Arnold will be forgotten in the comparison. Oh ! is 



FAST-DAY DISCOURSE. 35 

there not in tliese days, in the conduct of our public men, 
cause for deep humiliation I And can we find anything, by 
the most diligent search, on this day of prayer for our coun- 
try, wiiich is a more profound cause for [)ublic, national hu- 
miliation, shame, and sorrow, to ourselves as a people, and 
in the eyes of all the world? 

Bo assured, I have not drawn these pictures of public men 
in Church and State — dimly though they have been painted 
compared with the livid hues of the originals — from the 
love of an amateur artist. I deeply mourn that these things 
are true. But I liave attempted to discharge a patriotic duty. 
My love of country is the prompting motive. We have too 
much at stake in this contest — the Church as well as the 
State — to stand upon any squcamishness of feeling or minc- 
ing of speech with regard to men. If any of you who hear 
me do not sym[)athizG with these sentiments, all 1 have to say 
is, that you do not approach the remotest confines of com- 
prehending the terrible turpitude of the crime wrapped up 
in the simple phrase — treason and armed rebellion against the 
Government of the United States. I have as dear friends in 
the South as any man. I know them and I know their 
country well. If I am charged with impaling them here, I 
may answer with the ancient Roman — It is not because I 
love Cffisar less, but Kome more. 

And now, what is our dutyi' It is to stand by our Gov- 
ernment in this contest for its life. Fond mothers must srive 
their sons — doting wives their husbands — loving sisters their 
brothers — and not hold them back when their country calls 
at such a time as this, but bid them haste to the battle-field, 
to the field of glory and of death if need be, to save our 
country from death in a grave dug by treason's hand. Fol- 
low them there with your sympathies and your prayers, and 
sustain them in the fight, and look beyond them, even to 
God, for victory to their arms. And thus in the offering you 
make for your country, you shall fulfill the demands of our 
text: "Ofter the sacrifices of righteousness, and put your 
trust in the Lord." 

And do you ask with the Psalmist of old, " Oh ! Lord, how 
long?" For how many months or years must I otier up 
this daily sacrifice upon the altar of my country ? The 



36 FAST- DAY DISCOURSE. 

unswer is, until the strife shall be ended and the country saved. 
Better is it that the contest should continue for years, if need 
be, if in the end treason may effectually be put down, and the 
causes which have brought it on forever cured. If they are 
not, we shall have chronic war, breaking out into violence 
every few years, and our children and our cliildren's children 
will be ashamed of our memory. But if we do our duty, 
they will rise up and call us blessed. If we do our duty — 
if the loyal men and w^omen of this land perform their duties 
faithfully, and I believe they will — then, and you may mark 
my word for it, six months from this day of prayer will not 
pass, before the Federal armies will have possession of every 
important city, town and post, in the South, before that iden- 
tical old "banner of beauty and of glory,"' shot down by 
rebel guns from the flagstali'of Sumter, shall again wave 
over its walls, and the stars and stripes be again unfurled 
over every fortress, and arsenal, and custom-house, in every 
Southern port. And as the gallant commander of the depart- 
ment of the West, shall approach the Mexican Gulf, and 
knock at the gates of the Crescent City, he will have no 
such contest for admission as Jackson had to save it, when 
he disputed the approach of Pakenham upon the plains of 
Chalmette, but the people will welcome the Pathfinder as 
their Deliverer, and like " the iron gate that led into the 
city " of Jerusalem when tlie Apostle Peter was escaping 
from prison, the gates of New Orleans will " open to him of 
their own accord." 

But what if the strife shall continue longer ? We are con- 
tending for liberty, for country, for posterity, for mankind, 
and if God in his providence so direct we will labor longer, and 
yield a cheerful submission to his will. We will adopt as our 
motto the beautiful sentiment of Whittier, the Quaker poet: 

If, tor the age to come, this hour 
Of trial hath vicarious power, 
And blest by Tliee, our present pain 
Be Liberty's eternal gain. 

Thy will be done ! 
Strike Thou, the Master, we Thy keys, 
The anthem of the destinies ! 
The minor of Tiiy loftier strain : 
Our hearts shall breathe the old refrain, 

TllY WILL BE DONE I 



^PPEISTDIX. 



Note A. — Paqe 19. 

The following extracts are from Dr. Palmer's discourse: "In determining 
our duty in this emergency, it is necessary that we should first ascertain the 
nature of the trust providentially committed to us. •'• * ■' If, then, the South 
is such a people, what, at this juncture, is their providential trust? I answer, 
that it is to conserve and perpetuate the institution of domestic slavery as note exist- 
ing. * * * Without, therefore, determining tlie question of duty for future 
generations, I simplj' say, that for us, as now sitiuitcd. the duty is jjlain, of 
conserving and transmitting the system of slavery, with the freest scope for itK 
natural dci'elopme7it and extension. * * ••■ No man has thoughtfully watched 
the progress of this controversy without being convinced that the crisis must 
at length come. * * * The embarrassment has been, while dodging amidst 
constitutional forms, to make an issue that should be clear, simple, and tangi- 
ble. Such an issue is at length presented in the result of the recent Presiden- 
tial election. * * * For myself, I say, that under the rule which threatens 
us, / throw off the yoke of this Union as readily as did our ancestors the yoke 
of King George III, and for causes immeasurably stronger than those pleaded 
in their celebrated Declaration. * * * The decree has gone forth that the 
institution of Southern slavery shall be constrained within assigned limits 
Though nature and Providence sliould send forth its branches like the Banyan 
tree, to take root in congenial soil, lierc is a power superior to both, that says 
it shall wither and die within its own charmed circle. What say you to this, 
to whom this great providential trust of conserving slavery is assigned? * * * 
Tt is this that makes the crisis. Whether we will or not, this is the historic mo- 
ment when the fate of this institution hangs suspended in the balance. * ' '■ 
As it appears to me, the course to be pursued in this emergency, is that which 
has already been inaugurated. Let the people in all the Southern States, in 
solemn council assembled, reclaim the powers they have delegated. * •■■ Let them 
pledge each other in sacred covenant to \iphold and perpetuate what they can- 
not resign without dishonor and palpat)le ruin. Let them further take all the 
necessary steps looking to separate and independent existence, and initiate meas- 
ures for forming a new and homogeneous Confederacy. Thus prepared for every 

contingency, let the crisis come." "It establishes the nature and solemnity 

of our present trust, to preserve and transmit our existing system of domestic 
servitude, with the right, unchanged by man, to go and root itself wherever 
Providence and nature may carry it. This trust we will discharge in the face 
of the worst possible peril. Though war be the aggregation of all evils, yet 
should tlie madness of the hour appeal to the arl)itration of the sword, we will 
not shrink even from the baptism of fire." 



38 APPENDIX. 

Thus the eloquent declaiiner furnishes the prool' of the position I hare taken, 
iind urges disunion at the hazard of civil war nearly one full mouth bel'ore the 
'secession" of his own native South Carolina — for the purpose of ''conserving 
and transmitting the system of slavery with the freest scope for its natural 
ilevflopment and rxteimou.'' 



NoTK B.— Page 19. 

The Hon. Alexander II. Stephens, Vice President of the "Confederate 
States," in a speech at Savannah. March 21 ,.1801, as reported for the Savannah 
Republican, uses the following language: 

•'The new Constitution has put at rest, forever, all the agitating questions 
relating to our peculiar institutions — African Slavery as it exists amongst us — 
the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the im- 
mediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution. Jkifeksox, in his 
forecast, had anticipated this, as the '■rock upon ivhich the old Union would split.' 
lie was right. What was conjecture with him, is now a realized fact. But 
whether he fully comprehended the great truth upon which that rock stood 
and stands, may be doubted. The prevailing ideas entertained by him and most of 
the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old Constitution, were that 
the enslavement of the African ivas in violation of the laws of nature; that it was 
iivong in principle, socialh/, morally, and politicalli/. It was an evil they knew 
not well how to deal with, but the general opinion of the men of that day, was 
that some how or other, in the order of Providence, the institution would be 
evanescent and pass away. This idea, though not incorporalcd in the Consti- 
tution, WAS THE I'RKVAiLiNG IDKA -IT THE TIME. TliC Constitution, it is true, 
secured every essential guaranty to the institution while it should last, and 
hence no argument can be justly used against the Constitutional guarantees 
thus secured, because of the common sentiment of the day. Thfse ideas, how- 
ever, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality 
of races. This was an error. It was a sandy foundation, and the idea of a 
(Jovernment built upon it, when 'storm came and wind blew, \i fell.' Our 
new Government is founded upon exactly the oi)posite idea; its foundations 
are laid, its corner-stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal 
to the white man; that Slavery — suboinlination to the superior race — is his 
ii.iiiirnl and moral condition. This, our new Government, is the first, in the 
liistory of the worM, based upon this great plnsical, philosophical and moral 
tnith.'" 



Note C— Pace 20. 

The following are extracts from Dr. Thornwell's celebrated article on the 
•State of the Country," in defence of secession, as published in the Southern 
frcsln/lerian Review, (a quarterly,) in January, 1801, showing tlial the cau.<ie of 
ilie rebellion, was the Ai'PKEnEXSio.v of "something" to result to the institu- 
tion of slavery from the eleclion of Mr. Lincoln to the Presidency. Speaking 
of the action of the South Carolina Convention, he says: " Tlie presumjition 
•dearly is, that there is something in the attitude of the Government which 
I'oRTENDS danger and demands resistance. There mu«t be a cause for this 



APPENDIX. 39 

intense and pervading sense of injustice and injury. •' '•■ The real cause of 
the intense excitement of tlic South, is not vain dreams of national glory in a 
separate Confederacy, nor the love of the filthy lucre of the African slave 
trade; it is the profound conviction that the Constitution, in its relations to 
tlaveri/, has been virtually repealed; tliat the Government has assumed a new 
and dangerous attitude upon the subject; that we have, in short, new terms of 
union submitted to our acceptance or rejection. Here lies the evil. Tlie elec- 
tion of Lincoln, when properly interpreted, is nothing more nor less than a 
proposition to the South to consent to a (lovernment, fundamentally difterent 
upon the question of slavery^ from that which our fathers established. If this 
point can be made out, secession becomes not onli/ a ri<jht but a bounden duty. * * 
If, therefore, the South is not prepared to sec her institutions surrounded by 
enemies, and wither and decay under these hostile influences, if she means to 
cherish and protect them, it is her bounden duty to resist the revolution whicli 
threatens them with ruin. The triumph of the principles which Mr. Lincoln 
is pledged to carry out, is the death-knell of slavery. * * The principle is at 
work and enthroned in power, whose inevitable tendency is to secure this 
result. Let us crush the serpent in the egg. * * Under these circumstances, 
we do not see how any man can question either tlic riyhteousness or the necessity 
of seressiony 

As further proof of the cause assigned being founded in the .vrrREHEXsioM 
referred to, take the following from Dr. Palmer's elaborate paper entitled " A 
Vindication of Secession and the South," published in the South-rn Presbyterian 
Review, (a quarterly,) in April last, in reply to an article in the Danville Re- 
view by Dr. Breckinridge, of Kentucky: 

"It betrays a want of statesmanship to overlook tlie real causes of a great 
popular movement, and to base a political remedy upon motives which are 
purely fanciful. Why will not Kentucky and the world believe the constant 
averment of the seceding South, that she has acted under the conviction of an 
aniaziny peril, and from a sense of compelling justice? Through nearly a half 
a century a party has been struggling for political rule, in sworn hostility to 
that institution upon whicli the life and being of the South depend. It has 
grown through all opposition, until it lias imbued the public mind of the North 
with a kimlrcd, though somewhat restrained, abhorrence of slavery. It has 
laid hold upo!i all parties as instruments of its will; and now at length, subor- 
dinating the Republicans as its pliant tool, it has throned itself upon the chair 
of State, and speaks with the authority of law. We need not go through all 
the details of a long and too familiar story, and recite the utterances and 
disclose the platforms of the dominant party now represented in the occu- 
pancy of the White House. What was the South to do? Submission at this 
stage would have been submission forever; and since this was impossible 
without the surrender of all that a people can hold dear — liberty, lienor, and 
safety — she simplj', and, as we think, with great dignity, withdrew from the 
disgraceful and destructive association. Yet, while struggling thus for life 
itself, she is stigmatized by such a man as Dr. Breckinridge, with a base lust 
of power, or peevishly resenting the loss of a political control which she can 
not hope to recover." 



40 APPENDIX. 

Note D.— Page 21. 

The followinp is the paper of the General Assemblj' referred to: 

§ 42. Action of the Assembb/ of 1818. 

(a) "The following resolution was submitted to the General Assembly, viz: 

" Resolved, That a person who shall sell as a slave, a member of the Church, 

who shall be at the time in good standing in the Church and unwilling to be 

sold, acts inconsistently with the spirit of Christianity, and ought to be 

debarred from the communion of the Church. 

■'After considerable discussion, the subject was committed to Dr. Green, Dr. 
liaxter, and Mr. IJurgess, to prepare a report to be adopted by the Assembly, 
embracing the object of the above resolution, and also expressing tlie opinion 
(if the Assembly in general, as to slavery." — Minutes, 1818, p. 088. 
[ The report of the committee was unanimously adopted, and is as follows,viz.] 
"The General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church, having taken into con- 
sideration the subject of slavery, think proper to make known their sentiments 
upon it to tlie Churches and people under their care. 

(6) "We consider the voluntary enslaving of one portion of the human race 
hy another, as a gross violation of the most precious and sacred rights of human 
nature; as utterly inconsistent Avith the law of God, which requires us to love 
our neighbor as ourselves, and as totally irreconcilable with the spirit and 
principles of the gospel of Christ, which enjoins that 'all things whatsoever 
ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them.' Slavery creates 
a paradox in the moral system; it exhibits rational, accountable, and immor- 
tal beings in such circutnstances as scai'cely to leave them the power of moral 
action. It exhibits them as dependent on the will of others, whether they 
.>*hall receive religious instruction; whether tliej' shall know and worship the 
true God; whether they sliall enjoy the ordinances of the gosj)el; whetlier 
they shall perform the duties and cherish the endearments of husbands and 
wives, parents and children, neighbors and friends; whether they shall pre- 
serve their chastity and purity, or regard the dictates of justice and humanity. 
Such are some of the consequences of slavery — consequences not imaginary, 
but which connect themselves with its very existence. The evils to which the 
slave is always exposed often take place in fact, and in their very worst degree 
and form; and whei-e all of them do not take place, as we rejoice to say in 
iiianj' instances, througli the intluence of the principles of humanity and reli- 
gion on the mind of masters, the^' do not — still the slave is deprived of his 
natural right, degraded as a human being, and exposed to tlie danger of pass- 
ing into the hands of a master who may inflict upon him all the hardships 
and injuries which iniiumanity and avarice may suggest. 

"From this view of the consequences resulting from the practice into which 
('liristian people liavc most inconsistently fallen, of enslaving a portion of 
their ))rethrcn of mankind— 'for 'God hath nuido of one blood all nations of 
men to dwell on the face of tlie earth" — it is manifestly the duty of all Chris- 
tians who enjoy the liglit of the present day, Avhcn the inconsistency of slav- 
ery, both with the dictates of humanity and religion, has been demonstrated, 
and is generally seen and acknowledged, to use their lionest, earne.=it, and 
unwearied endeavors, to correct the errors of former times, and as speedily as 
[•ossiblo to efface this blot on our holy religion, and to obtain the complete 



APPEIJDIX. 41 

abolition of slavery throughout Christendom, and if possible throughout the 
world. 

(c) •' We rejoice that the Church to wliich wc belong commenced as earlj' as 
any other in this country, the good woik of endeavoring to put an end to slav- 
ery, and that in the same work many of its members have ever since been, 
and now are, among the most active, vigorous and efficient laborers. We do, 
indeed, tenderly sympathize with those portions of our Church and our country 
where the evil of slavery has been entailed upon them; where a great, and 
the most virtuous part of the community abhor slavery, and wish its exter- 
mination as sincerely as any others — but where the number of slaves, their 
ignorance, and their vicious habits generally, render an immediate and uni- 
versal emancipation inconsistent alike with the safety and happiness of the 
master and the slave. With those who are thus circumstanced, we repeat that 
we tenderly sympathize. At the same time, we earnestly exhort them to con- 
tinue, and if possible, to increase their exertions to effect a total abolition of 
slavery. We exhort them to suffer no greater delay to take place in this most 
interesting concern, than a regard for the public welfare truly and indispens- 
ably demands. 

(rf) "As our country has inflicted a most grievous injury upon the unhappy 
Africans, liy bringing them into slavery, we cannot indeed urge that we should 
add a second injurj' to the first, by emancipating them in such manner as that 
they will be likely to destroy themselves or others. But we do think that our 
country ought to be governed in this matter by no other consideration than an 
honest and impartial regard to the happiness of the injured party, uninfluenced 
by the expense or inconvenience wliicii such a regard may involve. We, tliere- 
fore, warn all who belong to our denomination of Christians, against unduly 
extending this plea of necessity; against making it a cover for the love and 
practice of slavery, or a pretence for not using efforts that arc lawful and 
practicable, to extinguish this evil. 

"And we, at the same time, exhort others to forbear harsh censures, and un- 
charitable reflections on their l)rcthrcn, who unhappily live among slaves 
whom they cannot immediately set free; but who, at the same time, are really 
using all their influence, and all their endeavors, to bring them into a state of 
freedom, as soon as a door for it can be safely opened. 

" Having thus expressed our views of slavery, and of the duty indispensably 
incumbent on all Christians to labor for its complete extinction, we proceed to 
recommend, and Ve do it with all the earnestness and solemnity which this 
momentous subject demands, a particular attention to the following points. 

(e) " Wc recommend to all our people to patronize and encourage the Society 
lately formed, for colonizing in Africa, the land of their ancestors, the free 
people of color in our country. We liope that much good may result from 
the plans and efforts of tliis Society. And while we exceedinglj' rejoice to 
have witnessed its origin and organization among the holders of slaves, as 
giving an unequivocal pledge -of their desires to deliver themselves and their 
countr}' from the calamity of slavery; wc hope that those portions of the 
American union, whose inliabitants are by a gracious providence more favor- 
ably circumstanced, will cordially, and liberally, and earnestly co-operate 
with their brethren, in bringing about the great end contemplated. 

(/) "We recommend to all the members of our religious denomination, not 
only to permit, but to facilitate and encourage the instruction of their slaves 



42 APPENDIX. 

in the principles and duties of the Clii-istian relip;ion; by granting tlieni lib- 
erty to attend on the preaching of tlie gospel, when they have oppoituni(y ; by 
favoring the instruction of them in the Sabbath-scliool, wherever those schools 
can be formed; and by giving them all other proper advantages for acquiring 
the knowledge of their duty both to God and to man. We are perfectly satis- 
fied that it is incumbent on all Christians to communicate religious instruction 
to those who are under their authority, so that the doing of this in the case 
before us, so far from operating, as some have apprehended that it might, as 
an incitement to insubordination and insurrection, would, on the contrary, 
operate as a most powerful means for the prevention of those evils. 

(ff) "We enjoin it on all Church Sessions and Presbyteries, under the care 
of this Asscmblj', to discountenance, and as far as possible to prevent all 
cruelty of whatever kind in the treatment of slaves; especially the cruelty of 
separating husband and wife, parents and children, and that which consists in 
selling slaves to those who will either themselves deprive these unhappy people 
of the blessings of the gospel, or who will transport them to places where the 
gospel is not proclaimed, or where it is forbidden to slaves to attend upon its 
institutions. And if it shall ever happen that a Christian professor in our com- 
munion shall sell a slave who is also in communion and good standing with 
our Church, contrary to his or her will and inclination, it ought immediately to 
claim the particular attention of the proper Cliurch judicature; and uuicss 
there be such peculiar circumstances attending the case as can but seldom 
happen, it ought to be followed, without delay, by a suspension of the offender 
from all the privileges of the Church, till he repent, and make all the reparation 
in his power to the injured party." — Minutes, 1818, p. G92. 



Note E.— Page 23 

The action of the "powers that be," (and that were.,) under one form or 
another, has been very explicit in all times of our history, showing how the 
"political fathers" regarded slavery in connection with our Government, how 
they "resolved" about it in Conventions and in the Continental Congress, and 
how they repeatedly legislated upon it respecting the Territories; and some of 
these various acts ilatc back earlier than the adoption of the present Constitu- 
tion, earlier, therefore, than is intimated in the body of the Discourse, ("since 
the origin of the Government, beginning with the administration of General 
Washington, and coming down to that of Mr Polk,") and they bring out the 
following results : 1. That to prevent the further introduction of African 
slaves, to prohibit the further extension of the system of slavery, and even to 
secure its final abolition, were prominent objects of the Revolution wliich estab- 
lished our national independence. 2. That all the leading men of that day, 
with very rare excey)tions, agrecil in these views and objects. 3. That, includ- 
ing the action of the Continental Congress under the old Confederation, and the 
Congress of the Uniteil States under the present Constitution, there has been 
direct legislation at least thirteen times, prohibitory of Slavery in the Territo- 
ries. 4. That this legislation comes down to as late a period as the adminis- 
tration of James K. Polk, a Southern President, who signed the bill organizing 
the Territory of Oregon, prohibiting Slavery north of 30 : 30 degrees North lati- 
tude. 5. Tliat, therefore, the doctrine that the Constitution carries Slavery 



APPENDIX. 43 

into the Tci'iitories of its own inherent I'orce, is a modern notion,— very modern, — 
never dreamed of by the men who made it. 

The proof of these points in detail, woidd he tedious. The following histori- 
cal data may suffice. 

1. Tiie proof of the first point is explicit. The "American Archives" were 
published by order of Congress, and are authoritative. In regard to the people 
of ViitGiNiA, it is said, in the fourth volume : 

" At a meeting of freeholders and other inhabitants of the county of Culpep- 
per, in Virginia, assembled at the Court House of said county, on Thursday the 
7tli of July, 1774, to consider the most effective method to preserve the rights and 
liberties of America. Resolved, That the importing slaves and convict servants is 
injurious to this colony, as it obstructs the population of it with freemen and useful 
manufartories ; and that ice will not buy any such slave or conmct servant hereafter 
to be imported." 

Resolutions to the same eftcct were passed in manj- other counties in Vii'ginia, 
and other Southern provinces. The State Convention met in Williamsburgh 
on the 1st of August 1774, and passed the following : ^'■Resolved, That we will 
neither ourselves import, nor purchase any slave or slaves imported by any 
other person, after the first day of November next, either from Africa, the 
West Indies, or any other place."' Mr Jefferson sent to the State Convention a 
letter containing the following : 

"For the most trifling reasons, and sometimes for no conceivable reason at 
all, his Majesty has rejected laws of the most salutary tendency. The aboli- 
tion of domestic slavery is the greatest object of desire in these colonies, where 
it was unhappily introduced in their infant state. But previous to the enfran- 
chisement of the slaves we have, it is necessary to exclude all further importations 
from Africa. Yet our repeated attempts to effect this by prohibitions, and by 
imposing duties which might amount to prohibition, have been hitherto defea- 
ted by his Majesty's negative. Thus preferring the immediate advantages of a 
few African Corsairs to the lasting interests of the American States, and to the 
rights of human nature deeply wounded by this infamous master." 

The Convention of North C.vuolina met at Newbern on the "27111 of August 
1774, and passed the following : '■^Resolved, That we will not import any slave 
or slaves, or purchase any slave or slaves imported, or brought into the Provin- 
ces by others from any part of the world, after the first day of November next.'' 

Other Colonial t^onventions took similar action. The delegates from the 
various colonies met in Congress, at Philadelphia, Sept. 5, 1774. Tliey formed 
a union of the Colonies, under what was termed, " Articles of Association." 
I'hey adopted these Articles unanimously. They state as follows : 

"We do for ourselves and the inhabitants of the several Colonies whom we 
represent, firmly' agree and asssociate under the sacred ties of virtue, honor 
and love our country', as follows : '• Tliat we will neither import nor purchase, 
any slave imported after the jirsl day of December next, after which time wo will 
wholly discontinue the slave trade, and will neither be concerned in it ourselves, 
nor will we hire our vessels, nor sell our commodities and manufactures to 
those who are concerned in it. 

"That a Committee be chosen in every county, city, and town, by those 
who arc qualified to vote for Representatives in the Legislature, whose busi- 
ness it shall be to attentively observe the conduct of all persons touching this 
Association; and whenever it shall be made to appear to the satisfaction of a 



44 APPENDIX. 

majority of any such Committee, that any person within the limits of their 
appointment has violated this Association, that such majority do forthwitli 
cause the truth of the case to be published in the Gazette, to the end that all 
Buch/oes to the rights of British America may be publicly known, and universally 
contemned as the enemies of American Liberty; and thenceforth we will respect- 
ively break off all dealings -with him or her." 

"And we do further agree and resolve that we -will have no trade, com- 
merce, dealings, or intercourse whatever with any colony or province in North 
America, which shall not accede to, or which shall hereafter violate this Asso- 
ciation, but will hold them as unworthy of the rights of freemen, and as inimical to 
the liberties of this country. The foregoing Association, being determined upon 
by the Congress, was ordered to be subscribed by the several members thereof; 
and thereupon we have hereunto set our respective names accordingly. — In 
Congress, Thiladelphia, Oct. 20, 1774." 

The names of all the delegates from all the colonies represented were signed 
to these Articles. GEorioiA alone was not represented in the Congress. The 
people of that Colony, however, met in Convention on the 12th of Jan. 177f), 
and passed the following: 

"We, therefore, the Representatives of the extensive district of Darien, in 
the colony of Georgia, having now assembled in Congress, by the authority 
and free choice of the inhabitants of said District, now freed from their fet- 
ters, do resolve: To show to the world that we are not influenced by any contracted 
or interested motives, but a general philanthropy for all mankind of whatever climate, 
language, or complexion, we hereby declare our disapprobation and abhorrence 
of the unnatural practice of slavery in America, (however the uncultivated state 
of our country, or other specious arguments may plead for it,) n practice founded 
in injustice and cruelty and highly dangerous to our liberties (as well as lives), 
debasing part of our fellow creatures below men, and is laying the basis of that 
liberty we contend for, (and which we pray the Almighty to continue to the 
latest posterity), upon a very wrong foundation. We therefore resolve at all 
times to use our utmost endeavors for the manumission of our slaves in this colony 
upon the most safe and equitable footing for the master and themselves." 

The Revolutionary war commenced in April, 177-'), only a few months after 
this general action upon slavery. As the men of that day had seen all their 
efforts to restrict slavery and the slave trade vetoed by the British crown, 
they were determined to throw off the incubus, even at the hazard of civil 
war. Hence this design, as the moving cause, is presented with peculiar 
prominence in the original form in which the Declaration of Independence was 
drawn up, and the efforts of "good King George" are thus painted: "He has 
waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights 
of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, 
captivating ami carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur 
a miserable death in tiioir transportation hitiier. This piratical warfare, the 
opprobrium of Infidel Powers, is the warfare of the Christian King of Great 
Britain. Determined to keep open a market where men should be bought and 
sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt 
to prohibit or restrain this execrable commerce. And that this assemblage of 
horrors might want no fact of distinguishing die, he is now exciting those 
very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase tiint liberty of which 
be ban deprived them, by murdering the people on whom lie also obtruded 



APPENDIX. 45 

them; thus paying off former crimes committed against the liberties of one 
people, with crimes which he urges them to commit against the lives of 
another." 

2. The proof of the second of the above points is fovind in the action already 
given, and in the writings of men too well known to be repeated here. 

'3. This point embraces a range of proof too tedious to be given at length. 
(1.) One vital fact, showing that imniediatel}' after Independence was gained, 
the Continental Congress designed to carry out in good faith the principle 
with regard to slavery for which the Revolution was waged, is seen in its 
action upon the then entire territory possessed, adopting the famous "Ordinance 
for the government of the Territory of the United States Northwest of the Ohio 
river," July 13th, 1787. Eight States were represented, and voted on this 
Ordinance, three now free, and five now slave, viz: free States, Massachusetts, 
New York, and New Jersey; slave States, Delaware, Virginia, North Carolina, 
South Carolina, and Georgia. Every State voted for the Ordinance, and also 
every member but one, Mr. Yates of New York. The Gtli article says: "There 
shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in the said territory, other- 
wise than in punishment of crimes whereof the party shall have been duly 
convicted.'' Thus, at that time, the whole public domain, the entire territory, of 
the Union, was devoted to freedom by a unanimous vote, save one, and that 
from a free State. This was before the adoption of the present Constitution. 
1 2.) The Federal Constitution was adopted in the same year, and in the Con- 
vention which framed it were many of the same men who in the Continental 
(Congress had so recently passed the "Ordinance" above cited. Tlicy put no 
clause into the Constitution restrictive of slavery in the States aa it was wholly 
a State institution. And, most assuredly, entertaining the sentiments on slav- 
ery so palpably and recently shown by their public action, they could not have 
intended the Constitution to protect slavery upon any soil covered by the Con- 
stitution exclusively, whether territory then owned Northwest of the Ohio, or 
any territory which might afterwards be obtained. "When the Constitu- 
tion was adopted," it is argued, "the Ordinance of 1787 was no longer of 
force." Be it so, and what then? The Constitution says nothing of that 
Ordinance, nor did the Convention act upon it. To make the most of it, if the 
Ordinance was superseded, it was on the ground only that the Constitution 
was the supreme law. IIow then stands the case ? (3.) Why, it stands thus: 
The Legislative Department of the government settled the matter. One of the 
first acts of the first Congress, under the Constitution, (embracing, again, many 
men %vho had been in the Convention that framed the Constitution,) re-enacted 
substantially the Ordinance of 1787, excluding slavery from the Northwest 
Territory; and in doing this, nobody dreamed that the Constitution was vio- 
lated. This being done by the fathers who made the instrument, it proves two 
things, (a) That they did not make the Constitution " to protect " slavery in 
the Territories, and attached no such meaning to its provisions; (6.) That it 
was not a violation of that instrument for Congress, acting under it, to prohibit 
slavery in the Territories. 

4. The power to prohibit slavei-y in the Territories has been exercised no 
less than eleven difi"erent times, in addition to those already specified. The 
exercise of this power began, (so far as authority existed, as shown above,) 
before the adoption of the Constitution. The acts appear in various periods 
of our history, and need not be detailed. One of the most important facts in 



46 APPENDIX. 

this connection, is, that as late as llie administration of Mr. Polk, a Southern 
President, witli a democratic majority in both Houses of Congress, this power 
was exercised in the bill for tlie organization of the Territory of Oregon. 

5. The Southern doctrine, therefore, that the Constitution carries slavery 
into the Territories, and that Congress is bound to "protect" it there by posi- 
tive law, is a doctrine unrecognized by and unknown to the fathers who made 
the Constitution, and was never insisted upon by any persons, North or South, 
until within a comparatively recent period. 



Note F.— Page 23. 

In view of the facts given in Note E, (above,) is it not a most monstrous pei- 
version of historical truth for Dr. Thornwell to assert, as already quoted from 
him, that "the Constitution, in its relations to slavery, has been virtually 
repealed,' by the elevation to power of the present administration, where the 
principle involved is only the securing of the Territories to freedom? Head 
again his statement of the cause of the rebellion, and the ground of his vindi- 
cation of it: " The presumption clearly is, that there is something in the attitude 
of the Government which portenus danger and demands resistance. 'J'here 
must be a cause for this intense and pervading sense of injustice and of 
injury. * * The real cause of the intense e.xcitement of the South, is 

not vain dreams of national glory in a separate Confederacy, nor the love of 
the filthy lucre of tlie African slave-trade; it is the profound conviction that 
the Constitution, in its relations to slavery, has been virtually repealed; that the Gov- 
ernment has assumed a new and dangerous attitude on this subject; that we 
have, in short, new terms of union submitted to our acceptance or rejection. Here 
lies the evil. The election of Lincoln, when properly interpi-eted, is nothing 
more nor less than a proposition to the South to consent to a Government, 
fundamentally different upon the question of slavery from that which our fathers 
established. * * * The issue has respect not to the man, but to the princi- 
ples upon which he is pledged to administer the Government, and which, we 
are signiticantly inibrmed, are to be impressed upon it in all time to come. 
Ilia election seals the triumph of those principles, and that triumph seals the 
subversion of the Constitution, in relation to a matter of paramount interest to 
the South." 

Now, when the historical /acM arc, that in the earliest times of the Govern- 
ment, and as late as Mr. Polk's administration in 1848, and so many times in 
our history, the action of the Government has been unform in its positive pro- 
hibition of slavery in the Territories, and never has by positive hiw protected it 
therein, what are we to think of the elaborate statements of Dr. Thornwell in 
a Quarterly lleview, te.achitiy the contrary of all this'/ And yd, such are the 
men who liave instigated and are leading on tliis rebellion — for such reasons. 



Note G.— Pace :J2. 

In proof of the point that the Church led tlie St.ite in llie change of views 
on the merits of the system of slavery, may be cited an article from the Acw 
Orleans True Witness, a religious paper, edited by Kev. 11. Mclnnis, a Presby- 
terian clergyman, a native Mississippian, m ho has the means of knowing 
whereof he afhrms. It is under dale of August 18, 1800. It may be added, 



APPENDIX. 47 

also, that the Synod of Mississippi oflicially declare the same thing stated in 
this article, as to the leading responsibility for this change. The editor 
remarks as follows: 

"Smylie o\ Slaveuy. — It is an interesting historical fact, that Rev. James 
Smylie, an old-school Presbyterian minister, was the first person in onr coun- 
try wiio took boldly the position that slavery was not inconsistent with the 
teachings of the Bible. He was one of the first Presbyterian ministers who 
came to the south-west and assisted in lorming the Mississippi Presbytery 
in 18l(i. The general view held at this time and for many years after, south 
as well as north, was that slavery was an evil. The question had not been 
examined. All took it for granted that slavery was an evil, and inconsistent 
with the spirit and teachings of the word of God. Hence the sentiments 
expressed by our Church, in 1818 — which, by the way, has been most shame- 
fully garbled and misrepresented — were at the time the sentiments of the 
whole country, and was regarded as a pretty strong southern document, hence 
all the south voted for it. In fact, so strong was the feeling for emancipation 
that this act of 1818 discouraged it, in our members where the slaves were not 
prepared for it, while it condemned the "harsh censures and uncharitable 
reflection" of the more ultra men of the north. We have referred to this 
merely to call attention to the fact that the opinion of the whole country was 
that slavery was an evil. And we know of no man who took a different posi- 
tion, until Rev. James Smylie, in answer to a letter addressed to him as slated 
clerk of the above Presbytery, wrote a reply in which he attempted to show 
that neither the Old nor the New Testament Scriptures declared slavery to be 
a sin, but both recognized it as an institution belonging to the great social 
system. This letter, which has long since been published in a pamphlet of 
Bomc eighty pages, small type, was not only the first, but it is in our view the 
ablest and most convincing scriptural argument ever published on the subject. 
It shows research, ability, honesty, and is unanswerable. When the substance 
of this letter was delivered in 1835 and 'i56 in the churches of Mississippi, in 
the form of a sermon, the people generally, large slave-holders too, did not 
sympathize with him in his views. AVe recollect hearing him on one occasion 
for some three hours, and every person, without exception, thought him some- 
what fanatical. The idea that the Bible did sanction slavery was regarded as 
a new doctrine even in Mississippi. Yet Rev. James Smylie — and a more 
honest man never lived — was honestly sincere in his convictions and his 
views, and he went ahead against the tide of public opinion. His scriptural 
argument has never been answered, nor can it be. This letter was the first 
thing that turned public attention in the south, and especially in the south- 
west, to the investigation of the subject; and every scriptural argument we 
have seen is but a reproduction of this, while none is so clear, full and unan- 
swerable. It ought to be republished. 

"Some two years after the publication of this letter, George ^IcDuflie, a sen- 
ator of South Carolina, announced similar views in Congress, and was regarded 
there as taking a strange and untenable position— one which met with little 
sympatiiy in that body. The fact is, the south had never examined the subject, 
and were finally driven to it by the intolerant fanaticism of ultra men at the 
north. 

" We mention the above facts, not for the purpose of provoking discussion, but 



48 APPENDIX. 

merely to show the state of public opinion at the time on the subject of slavery; 
and to show that the south is indebted to a minister of our church for the first 
clear and unanswerable argument against the generally admitted view that 
slavery was a sin." 

Note H.— Page 32. 

I have said that the clergy and the church are largely responsible for leading 
in the Southern rebellion. The facts to prove this are abundant. The course 
of Drs. Palmer and Thornwell, in the earliest days of the movement, are in 
point. Numerous other cases might be given, but a single significant exhibi- 
bition must suffice. In the Southern Presbyterian, of Columbia, S. C, of April 
20, 18G1, appears a communication dated Macon, Georgia, entitled "The Church 
and the Confederate States of America." The editor introduces the writer to 
his readers thus: "Many of them will recognize it as written by a gentleman 
occupying a high civil position in the Confederacy, and an Elder in the Pres- 
byterian Church." The comuiunication says: "This revolution has been 
accomplished mainly by the Churches. I do not undervalue the name, and posi- 
tion, and ability of politicians, still I am sure that our success is chiejiy attrib- 
utable to the support which they derived from the co-operation of the moral 
sentiment of the country. Without that, embodying as it obviously did the 
will of God, the enterprize would have been a failure. As a mere fact, it is already 
liistorical, that the Christian community sustained it with remarkable unan- 
imity. * * In times like these upon which we have fallen, the opinion 
of the Church upon political questions, when unanimously and freely declared, 
is far more potent than the tricks of the demagogue, or the eloquence of the 
renowned orator, or the oracular instructions of the retired sage. The reasoi: 
is, that our Church being sound, has the confidence of the irreligious world. 
Lei the Church know this, and realize her strength. She should not now abandon 
HER OWN GiJAND CKEATiON. She should not Icavc the creature of her prayers 
and labors to the contingencies of the times, or the tender mercies of less con- 
scientious patriots. Sue should consummate what she has bkgux." 

And much more, in this article, to the same effect. Upon the position of the 
Church as given in this communication, the editor writes his indorsement thus: 
•' We have no fears but that the Christian people of the land will prove faith- 
ful to their country in this day of trial, to the very last. As our correspond- 
ent suggests, this present revolution is the result of their uprising. * "' 
Much as is due to many of our sagacious and gifted politicians, they could 
fffect nothing until the religious union of the North and South was dissolved, 
nor until they received the moral support and co-operation of Southern Christians." 

All this is explicit. The status of the Southern clergy and the Southern 
church in this revolution is fixed by themselves, and acknowledged by South- 
ern politicians. They have assumed the responsibility, and they rejoice in the 
work of their own hands. This is history. What food here for thought, and 
cause for humiliation, among the people of God! 



